Eamon Dunphy Backs Stephen Kenny To Be The Next Ireland Manager

Where does the Irish football team go from here? The 5-1 defeat to Denmark in the second leg of the World Cup playoff ended what had been a bumpy qualifying campaign on the sourest of notes.

Remaining on the same path is a route Eamon Dunphy believes the FAI should not take. Martin O'Neill is yet to sign a new contract but has said himself that there is a verbal agreement.

Dunphy believes that reneging on that agreement is something which the FAI should consider, appointing Dundalk manager Stephen Kenny instead.

It is a possibility which Dunphy raised in his Irish Daily Star column and was asked about in 2FM's Game On last night.

I think Stephen Kenny has proved himself over and over, not just at Dundalk but at Rovers. He's a really top coach and he was within one bad decision of getting to the league stages of the Champions League.

Then he loses his players but he goes out and gets more, he's a really top coach. He's a low-profile guy, his work hasn't been appreciated.

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Dunphy's mini-revolution would not end with Kenny's appointment. He believes Brian Kerr should be brought back in from the cold to again work at youth level in Irish football.

Brian Kerr nurtured the generation that produced Robbie Keane, Damien Duff, Richard Dunne and others, and did really well in international competitions. Brian knows the grassroots of the game here, he knows the game as well and I think the Trapattoni experience was searing. Although we qualified for Poland, we got humiliated.

The Martin O'Neill experience for me, and I don't want to denigrate him (but) what he believes, I'm sure, is that our players aren't any good and he's got to play this up and under stuff.

While you can make a case for him keeping the job, you can make a case for turning over a new leaf, taking back control of who the manager of the Irish team is and the coach and giving Stephen Kenny and Brian Kerr remit for the next five years.